


Somnolescent

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Insomnia, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 10:52:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4301976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He comes full circle. Around to the smile again, even while she’s still thinking. While she’s pondering what to say and how, though it’s not quite her constant on waking. There’s some smug creeping in at the corners. Little-boy and not-so-little boy satisfaction shading it. Shading the words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: A one-shot set not long after Always (4 x 23), I suppose, but no spoilers other than an established Caskett relationship.

 

 

 

"Castle. You have to stop."

She doesn't open her eyes as she says it. He doesn't startle. It tells her as much as anything. As much as the irregular rhythm of his breath as he sighs and _hem_ s and carries on a silent conversation with himself. As much as the weight of his gaze. It tells her as much as she needs to know.

"Not sure I could if I wanted to." It's there when her eyes finally drag open. That light-up smile that's the first thing to greet her when she wakes, no matter the hour. "Been trying not to stare for four years."

"Not trying very hard." She nudges at him, but there's not much behind it. She's only just barely awake. She's clumsy, head to toe.

"Sometimes," he says, and if that twinge of melancholy isn't as ever-present as this particular smile, it's a frequent visitor. Mostly in the dark. In the wee hours. But sometimes in full sun if it's been a bad night. It's closer to full sun than dark now. "Sometimes I tried really hard not to."

"Sometimes," she echoes, though she'd rather not. She'd rather tease him. Cajole him back toward the smile with sharp little words and the surreptitious brush of lips and fingers, but it seems unkind. More that that, dishonest. Misleading, as if she only wants or welcomes the smile, and that's not the case. It's not at all.

"Don't have to try now, though."

He comes full circle. Around to the smile again, even while she's still thinking. While she's pondering what to say and how, though it's not _quite_ her constant on waking. There's some smug creeping in at the corners. Little-boy and not-so-little boy satisfaction shading it. Shading the words.

"Don't you?" She stretches. Slow and deliberate. A performance so over the top it makes him grin, but it makes his breath catch, too. It calls blood and heat to the surface of his skin and hers answers. "You don't think it's creepy to just lie there for hours _staring_ at me while I sleep?"

"If I were _just_ staring, it might be." He runs his hand down the inside of the arm she's flung high overhead. Fingertips to ribs, like it's explanatory. All part of the case he's making. "I'm studying," he says, and the drag of his palm down to her waist points her toes. It teases her spine to its full length, and makes every one of her muscles taut for a delicious instant, then easy and pliant. "Investigating."

"Investigating _what,_ exactly?" One eye opens to a narrow slit. She's wary in a lazy kind of way. As ready to open her mouth wide and laugh up at the ceiling as she is to breathe deep at the sudden weight of his body pressing hers into the bed. It's not quite dark, not quite full sun. Things could go either way.

"How you're so good at it." It's none of the above and something in between. His reply as he slips on to his side, pillowing his head on his arm.

"At sleeping?" She does laugh at that. A stuttering thing as he nudges her shirt upward and his fingers comb along the gathered waist of her pajama bottoms. The light touch almost tickles. It's almost like lightning. Little sparks fizzing along in its wake. "I'm not."

"Not?" His hand stills. He tilts his head, waiting, and it's not long. She comes to it on her own. Realization that it's not true. Not any more.

"I haven't been good at it. Historically."

But her eyes close and she slips into it. The easy, weightless state that's new— _so_ new—even though it feels like it's always been. That's so familiar that every night she's dressed in the dark—every night she's slipped away to her own bed with a _no arguments_ kind of goodbye—seems like something misremembered.

"Historically" His mouth skips over the skin of her shoulder. Her neck, and the words fall directly in her ear. "So this . . . sleeping prowess. It's a new phenomenon, Detective? Interesting."

He means it. It's a tease, too. It's self-satisfied and suggestive, but _curious_. He wants to know. He wants to follow the lead with her.

"New."

"New." His lips brush over her eyelids. One, then the other. "A break in routine. Often the investigator's friend. What might explain it?"

She tips her chin up. Flexes her fingers and curls them under the headboard where it meets the mattress. She twists her shoulders. Her hips. Rousing herself to thought. Urging his hands to action.

"Well . . ." It's a slow drawl as he complies. As he turns himself further into her. On his elbow now, his knee planted between hers as he raises up. She finds his mouth with her own. "I've been expending more . . . energy lately."

"At bedtime?" She feels the downward curve of his frown as he nips at her throat now. "Contra-indicated. _Not_ good sleep hygiene. All the experts say so."

"Hmmmm." She draws her arms down. Wraps them around him, gathering him closer. Arching her back to slide more and more of her skin under his willing mouth. "Maybe breaking the rules relaxes me."

"Not maybe." He moves quickly. Pulls her upright and tugs the wide neck of her shirt over her head in a single, fluid move. "I've observed you're quite the scofflaw." He lays her back down again, stripping his own top off and bringing them skin to skin. "Troubling for someone in your . . ." He rolls his hips, a diversion, and it works. He captures both her wrists in one hand and sweeps them up, coaxing her fingers until they're curled under the headboard again. Anchored as makes his own way back down. "Position of power."

"Position," she echoes. It's the last thing she can hold on to. The last thought for a long while.

* * *

 

"Stoooooop, Castle." She hates the whine. The way it drags out the _O._ She hates the sloppy, sated grin she can't seem to fight. "Stop staring."

"Can't stop." His voice is low. Lulling. "Gathering data."

"Is _that_ what the kids are calling it?" Her teeth snap at his wrist as he brushes the hair from her face and skims a palm down her cheek.

"Hmmm." He dots her lips with one fingertip, shivering as her tongue darts out to capture it. "Well, we have to chalk one up to exertion, wouldn't you say?"

"No." She struggles to roll toward him, but her limbs are heavy. Everything is heavy.

"No." He laughs and offers an assist, tugging the blankets and easing her arm around his ribs. "Care to reconsider?"

"This." She knocks her forehead against his shoulder. Pinches his side, cross with him. "Fine. This one. Yes."

It tires her out. Even that much effort. She's heavy. Drifting already, and _that's_ important. The fact that it's their breath mingling and how at home she feels right here. Like this, from dark to full sun and every place in between.

"This _one_ time," she says again. She forces her eyes open. Makes a face at the soft, fond look he's giving her. "Exertion. Fine. But not always."

"Not always," he echoes. Humoring her.

"Really." She lets her eyes flutter closed. Can't fight it any more. "You make me quiet."

He wants to call her out on that. She feels the flutter of a quiet laugh over her skin.

"You do." She finds his hand, somehow. She navigates the intricacies of his finger then hers, then his again and the press of their palms together. She pulls them to her heart, knuckles brushing just there before it's all too heavy. "You make me quiet here. That's it. New. Easier."

"Easier," he breathes. "That's good."

"Good." It's not quite the last thing she can hold on to. Not quite. "Come with me, Castle." She feels herself smile and wonders if it's as light-up as his. "Try."

"I'll try." That's the last thing she holds on to. His voice, thick and clumsy and satisfying. _S_ s falling from it and then he's heavy, too. "Easy."

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She's usually the one batting him away. Half asleep with the sweat still drying on her bare skin and no patience at all for the soft breathless kisses and bed time stories he loves to tell as he fits her body into the hollows of his own. She's usually the one to sprawl and grumble and hog the covers, sinking fast into dreams."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Another offering to/gift from the gods of sleeplessness. Again, no real context, other than early established relationship.

 

It's a rare reversal tonight. An unfamiliar foray into stereotype. She's not a fan.

She's usually the one batting him away. Half asleep with the sweat still drying on her bare skin and no patience at all for the soft breathless kisses and bed time stories he loves to tell as he fits her body into the hollows of his own. She's usually the one to sprawl and grumble and hog the covers, sinking fast into dreams.

That's how it is enough of the time that he teases her.

_Such a man, Beckett. Using me for my body, then just rolling over and going to sleep_

_Didn't hear you complaining while the 'using' was going on, Castle._

_Like you'd hear anything over your own cries of ecstasy._

_Ecstasy,_ she mutters, but it it gets lost in her own mouth. Somewhere far short of the tip of her tongue. She's asleep already.

It usually goes like that, but tonight it's him. Tonight, he's the one, heavy limbed and breathing deep. Not quite snoring, but it seems like that when she can't stop staring at the sweep of the second hand on her dad's watch propped next to her on the night stand. When the minutes and hours on his stupid, glowing dial turn over and over and over.

It seems like that when it's the exact dead of night and her eyes are still wide open and everything's exaggerated. When the ceiling is too white and endlessly far away and the walls are too close.

The soundscape of the city changes when it's well and truly late. The street below is quieter. Objectively quieter. She knows that, but every single noise tugs at her, and it's worse for the fact that there's no regularity. None of the reliable ebb and flow of a city at work. It's erratic. Unpredictable, and every single squeal of tires and distant shout plucks her out of what she's immediately sure was so nearly sleep at last.

_Then_ his breath sounds like snoring. _Then_ his body is too warm or too chilled when her own cold toes skate along his shin. _Then_ he's too heavy and unmoving. Too fidgety. _Then_ there's an imaginary clock somewhere. Ticking, ticking, ticking, and a light she can't find that slips through the open spaces of the shelves and burns even through her eyelids.

_Then_ she turns her body over and over and over, and it drives her insane the way the blankets are pinned beneath him. _Then_ she elbows him and he stirs. Just enough that she can snatch at the sheet. She pulls it across her body. Tucks it tight under her shoulder and presses her face-down body hard into the mattress, determined—absolutely determined—not to move.

It doesn't last, though. The sheet is too scratchy. It's too loose, a whispering rise and fall in the breeze of the fan he insists on running all night. It's too tight, and she can't stand the way it presses her shoulders down. She's a miserable, all-over itch. She'll never sleep again, and there he is, heavy limbed and breathing deep.

_Sleeping._

* * *

 

"Do you hate me?" she asks when he wakes.

When he's woken. She might have had something to do with it. She might have pinched him hard. She might be losing her mind a little.

"Hate you?" It's an odd combination. The smile he always has for her at war with the confusion furrowing his brow. "Never hate you." He kisses her. Rolls into her, mouth first, anyway, then pulls back, not quite frowning. "Did you pinch me?"

"You _must_ hate me." She leapfrogs the question. It's not quite fair. Nothing about this is, really. "Night after night." She rolls on to her back, feeling bleak. Tragic and white and far away like the ceiling. "How could you not?"

"For sleeping. Do I hate you for sleeping?"

He sounds so _proud_ of himself for connecting the dots. Like he's holding up a prize fish or knows who the murderer is, and she wants to pinch him again. He has her wrapped up, though. He has his arms around her and he's _strong_. Far stronger in this clumsy, unguarded state than he lets on in daylight, and somehow that infuriates her, too. It makes her struggle, kicking and trying to hit out with her fists, but he just holds her tighter.

"Never," he chants as his mouth drags over her skin. "Never hate you."

He holds her until she's quiet. Until the last ounce of inexplicable fight bleeds out of her and she's limp. Exhausted like a child, and the tears run from her eyes.

"Jealous." The word floats up out of him like a dreamy, one-word poem.

Her breath hitches once, twice, but she's too spent even to sob. To protest that it's a step along the same road. _Jealousy. Hate._ Companions to one another. She's too empty for anything, but he knows. Even startled out of a sound sleep, he knows.

"Not jealous of you."

He pinches her waist. Playful retaliation and the weak laugh siphons off the last of her energy. Blank, unfeeling tears wind along cool tracks on her cheeks. The product of exhaustion and nothing more.

"Jealous of sleep. Because it gets to have you like that."

He rocks one shoulder rearranging her. Staring off into the dark, mostly, but once in a while down at her face, like he's sketching her from life and only needs a now and then glance to know he's got the lines right.

"You laugh sometimes, you know." He plants a _no arguments_ kiss on her forehead as if she's denying it. "And sometimes you scrunch your face up into this _epic_ frown like a little kid and I wonder who you're arguing with. If it's me or your dad or some stupid boyfriend from a million years ago." He traces the lines down and out. Away from her lips and along her jaw. "I wonder what makes you laugh like that and sigh and wrinkle your nose."

He arrives back at the corner of her mouth and she feels it turn up. The tang of salt as a tear slips in. The silence opens her eyes. The hesitation, though her lids are swollen and the light that slips through feels heavy enough to hurt. He's waiting. A steady, blue gaze and a light-up smile.

"I _love_ watching you in the light of day." There's an intensity underneath the words. Seriousness that's almost pleading. Willing her to understand that he means this. Willing her to believe it. To _know_ it. "I love how in control you are. Poised and elegant, and so . . ." He breaks off on a groan. A hot, hungry kiss that takes him as much by surprise as it does her. "So fucking _articulate_." He breaks the kiss just as suddenly. He strokes her hair like she's the one who needs quieting. "I love watching what you've made of yourself."

He shifts again. He turns her like a doll in his arms and fits her body to his. He whispers over her shoulder, the words cool against her drying cheeks.

"But when you sleep, you surrender, and you fall so beautifully into all these different moments and moods and versions of you." His arms tighten. His voice is low and thrumming and eager. Blissful and lulling. "You fall so beautifully and sleep catches you and I'm jealous. I'm jealous, Kate."

The sibilants coil their way down her spine. The words collapse until they're just sounds. Accompaniment to her falling. She's not asleep. Not quite. But she's closer and closer and closer. Always halfway there until she falls.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I once spent the night at a friend's. I was convinced the ticking clock was the ONE THING keeping me awake, but also convinced that unplugging the clock would be unspeakably rude. But finally, I was desperate enough to yank the cord out. And the clock kept ticking, because who has a wall clock that plugs in? I went through the same agonies about the rudeness of taking out batteries and by some leap of insomniac logic, eventually threw the clock off the balcony.
> 
> Thanks for reading.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He's as careful as he can be. As quiet as possible. It all adds up to not very. He smiles in the dark, knowing that's what she'd say."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just another chapter. It has the feel of a capstone, but my own insomnia seems to be going nowhere.

 

 

He's as careful as he can be. As quiet as possible. It all adds up to _not very._

He smiles in the dark, knowing that's what she'd say. What she might still say if he bumps into one more thing and has the whole damned house up. And the whole damned house is quite a select group. Two and two alone, not counting himself, and though he really doesn't want to wake her, he will absolutely _die_ on the spot if he wakes her dad in his own cabin.

It'd be a stupid way to die. Sneaking out of her bed instead of into it. Not that he has to sneak, which is weird. Except it's not weird, because she's not exactly sixteen and they're not exactly breaking curfew, too caught up in rounding third to notice the time.

They're here as a couple—a bed-sharing couple—and neither generation of Beckett is fussed by it in the least. Which, in his middle-of-the-night, 100%-non-negotiably-awake-in-a-strange-place opinion, is weird, whether or not she's sixteen twice over, and no matter how many times and how creatively they've rounded third together in the past few months.

He's a hypocrite, he knows. He's poked fun at the way she still goes absolutely motionless on her way out of the bedroom when Alexis is home and up early enough to beat her the kitchen.

_She's not a_ T. rex, he's been known to whisper, planting his hands at her hips and skating her bare feet across the floor ahead of him. _She can see you whether you move or not._

He tells himself that's different, though. That it's _his_ house, and it's serious. _They're_ serious, and that means morning breath and her weird approach to pancakes and no more sneaking around nonsense with family. It means they all need to know this is how it is. How it should be.

Which brings him right back around to the grim truth that he's a hypocrite. A hypocrite, and a wide-awake sneak with his hand on the door, slipping out into the darkest night he's ever seen, because he can't shake the feeling that someone should be shaming him. Someone should be rounding up a preacher and a shotgun or something. Or at the very least making him pretend to sleep on the couch.

But they're not. No one is. And he's not sleeping anywhere.

* * *

 

He's expecting her by the time the door creaks open. A courtesy creak, because lord knows, silence is hers to command. He's expecting her, and still he hangs his head, ashamed and full of scattered regret he only can only see out of the corner of his eye.

Regret for wasting this. Moments he might've spent studying the way sleep takes her here. The way it might have taken her at sixteen, fresh-scrubbed and long-limbed, tumbling into the high bedstead after a long day of chasing the sun on the water. Twilight lingering as she rounded third with some summer love.

"I woke you," he says, an apology wrapped up in the droop of his voice.

"The minute the bed dipped." The weathered boards of the porch sag behind him. They groan as she lowers herself, sitting sideways and leaning into his back. Sneaking one arm around his waist to tease his fingers with hers. "Thought I'd give you a decent interval."

He laughs at that. A decent interval for what, he wonders, but he loves that there's room for anything at all in the tender, tongue-in-cheek way she says it.

"It's loud out here," she says after a while, and he's not sure if it's an out. If she'll let him claim that as the thing that drove him from the warmth of her. "It always surprises me. How loud."

They listen together a while. To crickets like rusty violins. To the unearthly belch of bullfrogs and the urgent, chattered songs of night birds. They drift together through black pierced by stars bright enough to feel cold on their skin.

"A different loud," he agrees eventually, though it's nothing to do with the fact he knows his eyes won't close anytime soon. Nothing to do with a mind not interested in stillness or even slowing down at the moment. "Rude," he says with his head tipped back. Loud, under the circumstances, but it makes her laugh. It makes her huff a warm, sweet breath into the curve of his spine, and he's content.

"Are you yelling at the moon, Castle?" She looks up and he feels the flutter of her fingers beside his ear. An apologetic wave on his behalf to the celestial body in question.

"Not the moon." He gestures broadly, carrying her hand with his. "Nature." She can hear the way his nose wrinkles. "Supposed to be peaceful, aren't you?"

She doesn't laugh at that. "Supposed to be," she echoes.

"Come," he says, twisting awkwardly half around. Tugging at her. "Here where I can see you in the moonlight."

"In the moonlight." She snorts. Rolls her eyes like he knew she would, but she clambers around at right angles to him. She slings her calves across his lap, and scoots close to wrap herself around him. To have him wrap himself around her in turn.

"It _is_ peaceful," he says quietly. Earnestly. "Beautiful out here."

"But hard."

She tucks the crown of her head under his chin. A childish thing so she doesn't have to look him in the eye. A childish thing, because he'll rock her in his arms the way he has a dozen times when the job is hard or a memory of her mother or how her dad used to laugh so easily cuts her to the quick. Or when he's joyful. Sometime he does it when he's joyful. Caught up in them or in a tale he's telling, and he rocks her in his arms.

"I'm sorry I didn't . . ." He's oddly quiet while she searches for the word. The motion of his body slows, then stops. "I thought bringing you here would . . . make amends."

"Amends?" He shifts, as if he'd like to study her. To find the answer in the lines of her body or the downward cast of her eyes. But she curls tighter into herself. She feels the moment it dawns on him. His spine going unmistakably straight, just for an instant, because hurt like that—anger like that—isn't something that goes in an instant, even for him. "Because this is where you came."

"Because this is where I _hid_." _And missed you every second._ She wants to add that. To defend herself and offer it up as penance. _And cried for you._ "I wanted to bring you here. Time away. But I didn't . . . consider that it might be hard for you . . ."

She trails off. Miserable and spent, but riled up, too, because she _needed_ this back then. A year ago. Just a little more than a year. She needed the cold, brilliant light of these exact stars and loud, loud night-time songs and laments to howl right along with her, and she should have handled it differently. She absolutely knows she should have. But she's sure this is the only place in the world she could've survived, and she did.

"It's not, Kate." That's what he's whispering. "It's not that. Not that." A lullaby as he rocks her. "Beautiful. Beautiful here, and I'm so . . . I'm so _glad_."

"So glad that you're wide awake and yelling at the moon?" Her laugh is a little watery. Not tearful, exactly, but in the edge like a conditioned response. Tears and these particular weathered boards well and truly linked in her mind and heart by now.

"Gently chiding nature," he sniffs, "for not conforming to the expectations raised by the brochure."

She smiles into him. A hard press of the upward turn of her lips into the skin just bare at the vee of his shirt.

"I'm . . . " They trade roles. He reaches for the word and she's still. He changes gears abruptly prelude mode now, rather than cutting to the heart of it. "This sounds weird. And corny. And I don't want to freak you out . . ."

"At this point, Castle?" She gives him a skeptical look. "Doubt you could."

She's playful. At ease in his arms in this loud paradise with its cold, brilliant stars. She closes her teeth around the cord of his neck. A taunt, but he pulls back. Smiles down at her, searching and serious.

"Oh"—he draws a shaky breath that's mostly a nervous laugh—"I think I could, Kate Beckett," he says, and her heart pounds, but he goes on, the intensity of it set aside for now.

"Being here . . ." He looks out into the middle distance. Closes his eyes and breathes. Listens and rocks her in his arms. "Being with you, like this. You and your dad and this place that you came to with your mom and without her. The fact that you asked me . . ." He shakes his head, awed. "I feel like I'm getting away with something. Like this can't possibly be for me."

He takes her hand and presses it to his heart like he wants her to feel how full it is. Like it explains everything, because how could he possibly sleep with a heart so full? It charms her. Fills her heart, too, and makes her ready to let things go. Tears and the creak of these particular floorboards.

But as for sleep, she has some ideas and her toes are cold. She unwinds herself. She stands and holds a hand out to him, starlight cold and and beautiful on her skin.

"Come back to bed, Castle." She tugs at him, coaxing. Demanding. "Let's get away with something."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: As always, thanks for reading


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s all ragged ends, and it’s ridiculous. He’s been gone six days. It’s been thirty-six days since the storm. A thousand and six plus however many days since they met that she’s gone to sleep all by her lonesome, and yet, here she is. He’s been gone six days, and this is what she’s come to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More projection from the land of really bad insomnia. Something set in early season 5.

She’s all ragged ends. She flips from back to belly, from side to side, and every position is wrong. The push of the mattress against unyielding joints. The bunch of the pillow and the unpleasant scratch of the sheets. She’s too hot, too cold. To exposed and too pinned down. 

She’s all ragged ends, and it’s ridiculous. 

He’s been gone six days. It’s been thirty-six days since the storm. A thousand and six plus however many days since they met that she’s gone to sleep all by her lonesome, and yet, here she is. He’s been gone six days, and this is what she’s come to. 

She groans out loud. Feels the sound raking up the inside of her ribs and filling her mouth. Feels it rattle the glass in the windows and the loose things on the night stand, though that has to be an illusion. A sleep-deprived _de_ lusion. It has to be.

She arcs her chin up. The small muscles at the base of her skull throb and ache. Even the feather touch of the pillow is too much, but she presses into the discomfort. She wills her spine to maintain the cruel, biting arc for as long as she can hold her breath, then lets it out. An inelegant _whoosh_ and the collapse of her body, bringing no relief at all. 

The looming, swing-arm lamp catches her eye. Her hand lifts from the bed, then falls back. She curls her fingers into a tight fist against the urge to flick it on. Counts the sharp half moons of her nails biting into her palm instead. It’s desperation as much as defiance. Surrender as much as will. She can’t bear the thought of light right now. Of words swimming on a page and the weight of a book in her hands, all of it doing nothing to quiet her mind. Nothing, in the end, to bring her relief. 

She throws off the covers. The sheet tangles around her ankles and the struggle is more than she has in her. She’s exhausted. _So_ exhausted that she gives in at last. She gives up the idea of movement altogether. She lies on her back with her eyes open wide. Tears gather and spill over. They spill out and stream over her temples to dampen her hair and pool in the whorls of her ears. 

It’s the opposite of effort. The total absence of resistance, but her head pounds anyway. Her throat goes thick and tight and some hysterical part of her mind wants to laugh at the melodrama of it all. Wants to well and truly _scream,_ as if that might bring relief. 

That’s when she hears it. At what seems to be— _has_ to be—her absolute lowest point she hears the distant sigh of floorboards. The metallic cascade of lock tumblers and the _chunk_ of her stubborn door handle giving in. 

It ought to galvanize her. It ought to have her soundlessly sliding the night-table drawer open and seeking the reassuring weight of her back-up piece. It absolutely ought to have her on alert. 

Instead, there’s only stillness. Her limbs are limp and heavy. Her spine pops and releases in a dozen places at once. Her eyelids slip closed and breath fills her body, cool and soothing. It tucks itself around the pleasant tattoo of butterfly wings at the very center of her. 

There’s only stillness. Anticipation as the sounds of him come to her. The almost-soundless downbeat of his bag as he sets it in the hallway. His keys— _her_ keys mingling with them—finding their way back into his pocket. 

“You’re not supposed to be here.” Her head drops to the side. An easy, comfortable glide and a delicious stretch as counterpoint. He’s a dark silhouette in the bedroom doorway. A shape that’s all shadows she wants to wrap herself in. 

“I was trying to be quiet.” He crosses the floor. Crosses the empty side of the bed on clumsy, eager knees. His lips land on her shoulder, the apex of her jaw, the salt-streaked expanse of her temple. He pulls back, concern crackling around him as he plucks careful words from the darkness. “You were awake?” 

He reaches to turn her face toward the low light filtering through the milky glass of the windows. She winces at first. Tenses up and means to resist, but the cool of his fingers tames the instinct. 

“Awake,” she says. She feels a tired smile tug at the corners of her mouth and turns her lips into his palm. “I was awake.” 

“Me too.” He burrows closer to her. His weight sends a wave through the mattress. It tosses her from side to side, and a weary, giddy thrill courses through her, all the way down to her toes and out to the far reaches of her fingers. “I was awake far away.” 

“Fixed that.” It’s not a question, though she’s curious. Maybe even worried in some tomorrow part of herself. Some upright, daylight version of her might be worried that it’s come to this. That neither of them can go a week without falling utterly apart. “Awake here now.” 

Her mouth finds his. Her whole body finds his with an ease that feels like an eternity in the making. The pad of his thumb skates along her ribs. The very tips of her short, neat fingernails trip down his spine. She feels the slow, steady thump of his heart deep in her own chest. Savors the scent of him, day-old clothes and all, and the perfect warmth of their tangled limbs. 

“You falling asleep on me, Beckett?” 

The words are a lazy rumble in her ear. The nip of his teeth an afterthought. A formality that makes her want to giggle. 

“Falling asleep.” It’s an echo, really. Repetition unburdened by sense.

“Thank God,” she hears him say. Just barely hears him say as they slip together into rest. “Thank God.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm annoyed with myself for letting myself get away with this. Beckett wouldn't go to bed without putting on the security chain. I KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE. And yet . . .


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's still. Pointedly still, with her eyes closed as lightly as she can manage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These always appear unexpectedly when I'm having the worst trouble sleeping. This one is a future snippet, though.

She's still. Pointedly still, with her eyes closed as lightly as she can manage. Not squeezed shut. That's . . . counterproductive, but not open, either. Not peering at the luminescent face of her watch or cracking one lid open to see if the face of her phone really is lit up or she just imagined a change in the quality of light. She's not counting the slats of the blinds or  the whoosh of cars through puddles down on the street. 

She's not thinking about sound at all. Not the creaks and groans of an occupied space at night, or the just-now absence of rain pattering against the window. She's not locked in on the mostly steady cadence of his breathing or the huff and plump of pillows as he turns. Of heavy blankets as he kicks them up and they fall back on to his body. On to hers. 

She's not thinking about the itch on the end of her nose or the damp patch of skin behind her drawn-up knee. She's unfazed by the heat radiating out from his body and the contrast with the far side of her own. The hot-cold-hot where her calf winds in and out of sheet, blanket, comforter. 

She's still, that's all. 

She's not awake when she should be sleeping. 

She's not desperate to know how many more hours, minutes, seconds it might be before she has to get up. She's not playing chicken with the alarm. 

She's just —   

“It’s called the nocebo effect.” 

Her heart does a deep dive. It springs up, then falls endlessly, rebounding off something low in her belly. 

“Castle!” she hisses. She’s furious with him. Burning and embarrassed and frustrated as shards of shattered stillness rain down on them. “You were—“ 

“—asleep?” He stretches, toes to finger tips, drawing it out. Exaggerating. “Mmmm. Kind of.” 

“What do you mean?” She rolls on to her elbows. She looms over him, scowling. “You were _out_.” 

“I was . . . drifting.” His hand floats up to skim along her arm, her shoulder, her jaw. “Can’t really sleep until you do.”

“Since when?” She means to scoff, but his fingers run through her hair. They travel lightly over her scalp and she feels knots everywhere undoing themselves in their wake. She feels her jaw softening, shoulders loosening. Her head bows toward him, and still something stubborn insists. “Since _when_ can’t you sleep without me?”

“Since forever?” His lips flutter against her ear. She’s sprawled out against his chest entirely now, fingers curled over his shoulder and her knee hitched up over his thigh. She’s draped over his body and wonders idly when that happened. How that happened when she was flat on her back a second ago. When she was being still. “Doesn’t it feel like forever, Beckett?” 

“You’re tricking me.” The yawn takes her by surprise. It takes the sting out of what she’d meant as a rebuke and makes her back arch in a long, lazy cat stretch. “Trying to trick me.” 

“No tricks.” 

He shakes his head. The hint of stubble brushing against her temple tickles. Makes her wriggle further into the hollow of his neck. 

“Yes, tricks.” She pushes at his biceps, urging his widespread hand higher up her spine. Pressing its warmth just _there._ Shivering deliciously as it creeps outward in tendrils, up and down and out along her ribs. “Big, stupid word. It’s a trick.” 

“Nocebo?” He can’t resist. There’s a keen note to his voice that works against his own agenda, needing to be right. “It’s a real word. It means . . .” 

“Know what it means.” She slaps blindly at his hip. Nudges her knee almost into his ribcage, but it’s effort. Too much effort. “Dizziness, dry mouth. Nausea.” The monotone of her own voice is hypnotic, but she struggles. Needs to be right, too, even though she thinks it’s stupid. This is probably pretty stupid, but he’s too smug. Too tricky. “Evil eye. Serious symptoms.” 

“Mmmm. Smart _and_ hot.” 

Satisfaction rumbles through his chest. He sweeps a kiss across her forehead and the upturned corner of his lips snags at her. A smile that’s too satisfied by half catches the ragged edge of her annoyance.

“No nocebo.” She rolls her neck and sinks her teeth into the first bit of bare skin she comes across. “Not taking _anything_.” 

A ripple runs through her, head to toe. A grumbling, petulant thing that has her rising up, then flopping hard against him, and she only has the fuzziest idea what it’s about. The most tenuous grasp on what it is that has her . . . protesting like this. Holding out against something or other. 

“I know you’re not.” He’s quick to soothe her. Light fingers and broad palms and an almost soundless chant in her ear. “I know.” 

“But,” she mumbles. “What?” It’s all gnarled up in her mind. The thing she’s asking. Accusing him of. He’s accusing her of. It’s a tangled mess. “What-cebo?” 

“You read ahead,” he says gently. “Insomnia comes later, but you peeked.” He tweaks her ear lightly. Lands a kiss almost on top of it, though. An indulgent smile. “Talked yourself into it way too early.” 

“Didn’t.” 

She tips her chin up. Goes cross-eyed trying to look him in the eye and laughs as she clumsily bats  at his cheek to push him away. Bring him into focus. She’s not arguing. She’s telling, telling, _telling_ him something, but her body is _so_ heavy. Her eyelids and the perfect warmth of his skin against hers. It’s all so heavy, but she needs to explain, and it’s not just having the last word. 

“Did,” she says sloppily. She presses her fingers to his lips. “Read the whole thing.” Her voice goes deep. “ _What to Expect . . ._ “ 

She’s laughing. The words are sloppy and loose in her mouth because she always thinks of it that way. A man’s voice. The deep black-and-white kind. Precise, like ancient film strips in grade school, but then she remembers it’s serious. She needs to tell him, so she makes her fingers work. She makes them travel all along the far side of his body until she finds his.

“Didn’t, though. Not nocebo. Later. That’s later.” She falls away from his body just enough to wedge their two hands between them. She presses them both, hers over his, tight and low against her belly. 

“Excited,” she tells him, and the word is like strings being snipped. It releases her and she’s floating up and away. “Just excited.” 

His voice comes from a distance. From a dream, maybe. From the stillness.  

“Me too.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not drawing from personal experience for once here.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I'm having a terrible time sleeping. I always am, but it's very bad lately, and so I project. I'm marking this as complete, though I have a few ideas for some short scenes in a similar vein. There's no plot, so I hope it won't be too burdensome if I do add to it it irregularly. Thanks for reading.


End file.
